HUNDREDS BLOCK CLINIC DURING ABORTION PROTEST

OAKLAND PARK -- A crowd of anti-abortion demonstrators, pushing baby strollers and carrying placards, blocked the doors to an abortion clinic for three hours on Saturday morning until police herded them off into paddy wagons.

Police said they had to drag and carry away 99 members of Rescue South Florida after the demonstrators planted themselves in front of the Women's Clinic on North Dixie Highway at 7:30 a.m. and refused to leave after three warnings.

Another 200 demonstrators, carrying a wooden cross and placards reading: "Abortion is America's Holocaust" and "How About Equal Rights for the Unborn," dispersed after police began moving in.

"Our being here is not a detriment to the women at this clinic," spokeswoman Katie Mahoney said. "We are here to help them, to offer support and to let them know that abortion is not the only alternative. We're here in humility and compassion, not in arrogance or protest."

Clinic employees, however, called the incident an appalling spectacle.

"To say that a fetus has the same rights as a grown woman is totally insane. To say that every child is wanted is incredulous," clinic administrator Joyce Tarnow said. "These people out here today have no respect for the Constitution of the United States or the concept of religious freedom."

Thirty-six police officers, from Oakland Park, the Broward Sheriff's Office and Fort Lauderdale, including two on horseback, were on hand to break up the demonstration.

Initially, many of those taken into custody would only identify themselves to police as "Baby Jane Doe" or "Baby John Doe." But once they were taken to the Broward County Jail to be processed, they gave their real names, police said.

Those arrested were charged with trespassing after warning and unlawful assembly. All were released with notices to appear in court, said Jim Leljedal, spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.

Although a few employees were able to enter the clinic before the entrances were blocked, other employees and some patients were shut out until the demonstrators were removed. Several motorists who entered the parking lot turned around and left after seeing the demonstrators.

Abortions were scheduled to be performed on Saturday at the clinic, which is owned and operated by women, Tarnow said. Those operations, as well as appointments for routine tests and examinations, had to be rescheduled later in the day.

Although the clinic received a fake bomb threat four years ago, this was the first major demonstration there, Tarnow said.

Unlike similar protests a few months ago in Coral Springs and Fort Lauderdale, Saturday's demonstrators, including pregnant women, men, and teen- agers, sang no songs and said no prayers.

Instead they remained silent to dramatize fetuses who have no voices to fight for their rights, Mahoney said.

"Everyone has a right to do what is right for them, but they don't have the right to tell everyone else what to do," Tarnow said. "To say that this is a civil rights movement is to shame the civil rights movement of the '60s."